


Steve Versus Football

by Neverever



Series: Steve Rogers, 21st Century Sports Fan [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Football, Gen, Grocery Shopping, Slice of Life, Super Bowl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Steve are tasked with shopping for the Avengers' Super Bowl party and talk football, sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steve Versus Football

“If Clint wanted a party, he should be responsible for the food,” Bruce grumbled as he pulled a cart from the row at the store entrance. He glanced over at Steve, who was looking pensively at the large shopping list.

“If we left it up to Clint, we’d be having frozen pizza and a couple of bags of chips,” Steve replied. He showed Bruce the list, on which someone had scrawled _food for twenty plus Steve and Thor_. He looked around the busy grocery store. “That’s, um, that’s a lot of advertising for the Super Bowl,” he said with a rather perplexed look on his face.

“Biggest food holiday after Thanksgiving,” Bruce said. “I think we’re going to need a second cart.”

Bruce steered them and their carts towards the bakery section to get out of the way of most of the crowd. He blamed Clint for their predicament. Late on Thursday Clint had decided they should throw a Super Bowl party. Tony (or rather a team of Tony’s assistants) spent Friday morning trying to find caterers, but no one reputable was available as everyone was already booked for the weekend. And he refused to just buy a restaurant for a party. 

After much debate, the other Avengers voted Bruce and Steve to be the most responsible shoppers and dispatched them to go out on Friday afternoon to buy food and non-alcoholic drinks. Clint and Tony had gone off somewhere to secure the beer and alcohol. 

Returning from the in-store coffee shop with a hot cup of tea and a sesame seed bagel for Steve, Bruce found Steve paging through the weekly store circular while sorting through a sizeable pile of coupons. Steve pointed to the large selection of cakes, cupcakes, and cookies decorated as footballs and football stadiums. “Those don’t look too appetizing,” Steve said dubiously.

Shaking his head, Bruce said, “Where do you want to start?”

Steve reviewed the list. “Okay, we need a lot of cream cheese, tomatoes, shredded cheese, sour cream, horseradish sauce …”

“For dips?”

“I guess,” he said with a shrug. “What about guacamole?”

“I’ll just grab a few avocados and make it from scratch. I’ll need to get limes.” Bruce scrubbed his hand down his face. “Wait a minute. Can I see the list?”

Bruce read over Steve’s handwritten list, his precise handwriting sloppily annotated with various teammates’ suggestions. 

“Okay,” Bruce said. “Let’s make this simple and easy so we can get out of here. I have no idea who thought we should make appetizers from scratch. None of us is Martha Stewart.”

“That’s for sure.” Steve laughed. Catching Bruce’s surprised look, Steve added, “I catch on quick. Daytime television.” He showed Bruce the circular advertising a large selection of dips, heat-to-serve appetizers, chicken wings and all sorts of party food on sale. “So you’re suggesting that we ditch the list and just pick up what we want?”

“I’ll make the guacamole and salsa from scratch. But yeah, I think it’ll just be easier to wing it.”

Steve considered for a second and then brightened up. “Okay – we’ll go with that plan.”

They picked up fresh rolls and bread in the bakery and then moved onto the produce section. Bruce could trust Steve to pick good produce for the salsa while he inspected the avocados. As he regarded the avocado selection with a practiced eye, he considered how surreal it was that he was shopping for a super-hero Super Bowl party with a super soldier, who was still amazed at being able to buy quality produce in winter. Bruce was no longer that arrogant scientist who would have driven Steve beyond crazy with questions and medical tests.

He bagged the limes and went to drop them off in one of the carts when he saw an elderly man with two very young children approach Steve next to the tomatoes. Bruce was close enough to overhear the man introduce his great-grandchildren to Steve. Steve knelt down and joked a little with the starstruck kids and then talked a little more with the grandfather.

After the man left, Bruce joined Steve as he was finishing up with the tomatoes. “Someone you know?”

Steve paused. “Another vet -- I met him at a local Legion post last month.” A shadow passed over his face. “I served with his brother at, um, Normandy.” 

There were moments when Bruce was reminded that while Steve looked young he was also a hardened war veteran. From seventy years ago. “Nice kids.”

“Yeah. They had a couple of questions about the Avengers. You should have come over.” 

Bruce shook his head. Kids wouldn’t believe the Other Guy was shopping for limes and sea salt. He critically evaluated what Steve selected. “We need fresh cilantro.”

A helpful older woman whose cart was full of appetizers showed them where the fresh herbs were. She asked, “So who do you want to win on Sunday?” 

Bruce rescued an at-a-loss-for-words Steve. “Our team didn’t win a playoff game.”

“There’s always next year,” she said cheerfully.

As they walked over to the meat counter, Steve asked, “So do you follow football?”

Bruce noticed the surprising hopeful note in Steve’s question. “Not really,” Bruce admitted. “I’m not really into sports.”

“Oh,” Steve replied, a little crestfallen. He parked the cart next to a cooler and started to pull out packages of wings. “I don’t know that much about football actually,” Steve continued. “I thought you might be interested when you said your team didn’t win.”

“It’s a defensive thing. People kind of assume that all guys are into sports so I’ve learnt over the years to fake interest.” Bruce said. “I picked up a few things over the years to just get through the awkward small talk.”

Bruce noticed that Steve was carefully watching the crowd around them and was putting himself between pushy people and themselves, trying to run interference for Bruce. He had learned long ago that Steve was the type of good guy who would show up to move your stuff without the beer. 

In the chip aisle, they considered the wall of chips, pretzels, tortilla chips and popcorn, Steve said, “Tony said the same thing -- that he’s not into sports except when required.”

“Oh, but he’s into the parties, though,” Bruce said.

They both laughed. Steve picked up a bag of barbecue chips and inspected it. He started to pitch a variety of bagged snacks into one of the carts. Then leaned over the basket and propped his arms on the handle. “I’m not that familiar with football. I never saw a game in person – I always thought it was something college boys played – and nowadays, it’s more popular than baseball.”

Bruce turned to him as he tossed in a box of sourdough pretzels from the bottom shelf. “Hmmm, I guess I just assumed that you knew about football like you do baseball.”

“I’d like to know how the game is played, what the rules are, you know, what’s going on on the field. Natasha could take it or leave it. And I can’t ask Thor for obvious reasons.”

“Thor would really like football,” Bruce stated. “What about Clint?”

They pushed their rapidly filling carts to the dairy section. Steve said, “Oh, Clint. I’ve watched the occasional game with Clint. But he concentrates on how the ball is thrown or possible trajectories and complains about the inadequacy about the passer rating. He gets obsessed with the kickers.”

They raided a cooler advertising party dips on sale and put three containers of each premade dip into a cart. Bruce commented, “And even though I don’t know much, I think the game involves more than the kickers.”

Steve carefully checked the carts over with a frown. “We need cheese and soda. And appetizers.”

Bruce picked out some cheese and cheese spreads. “You could always check the internet about the rules.”

Steve shook his head, a wry grin on his face. “I’ve read about the rules and strategy. But there are the things you can only really learn by watching a lot of games or having the game explained to you growing up.”

Bruce pointed out the soda aisle to Steve. Steve pulled out cartons of soda and put them on the shelves under the full carts. “Everyone focuses on the modern technology that they assume is strange and confusing for me. But that’s not the problem. It’s the intangibles -- like the Super Bowl, food shopping, party food -- the things that everyone knows about except for people who have been living under rocks. Like me.”

“You have company with Thor,” Bruce said.

“Thor takes everything in stride and doesn’t care what others think.” Steve stood up. “What next?”

Bruce thought hard, running over what they picked up so far through his mind. “Cookies, cake, something dessert-like?”

“I did not like how those cakes looked. How about ice cream?”

“Ice cream, it is,” Bruce agreed. “Frozen section here we come.”

On the way to the ice cream, they added some frozen appetizers to the carts. But they were stymied by the immense ice cream section. They leaned against the carts considering their options. Bruce turned to Steve. “You seem to manage well.”

“I take notes, then research on the internet or call a friendly librarian.”

“Or you could fudge things to just get along if you don’t understand. Works for me.”

“Bruce, I am not a fake-it-until-you-make-it person,” Steve stated firmly. 

“It’s time to get back to the Tower,” Bruce said. He had noticed that the store was getting crowded and he was starting to want to be somewhere else. “Let’s just get a bunch of those football cookies. And if someone complains --”

“They can make their own cookies,” Steve added.

After they went through the check-out with Steve pleased that they saved ten dollars with his coupons, they went to wait to be picked up by their assigned Stark Industries driver. Bruce said, “Tony’s invited his friend Rhodey to the party -- we can recruit him to the Teach Steve About Football Project. I’ll help as best I can.”

“Thanks, Bruce, I appreciate that,” Steve said with gratitude. “So if you don’t like football, why would you watch the Super Bowl?”

“The commercials. Although I would prefer to watch Puppy Bowl.”

“Puppy Bowl?”

“Three hours of puppies playing in a pseudo-football arena setting,” Bruce said with a smile.

Steve thought about it. “I’d like to see that. I could go for puppy-watching.”

“We can agree on that.”


End file.
